Imperium (Cicero Series #1) » (~)

Robert Harris is the author of Pompeii, Enigma, and Fatherland. He has been a television correspondent with the BBC and a newspaper columnist for the London Sunday Times and The Daily Telegraph. His novels have sold more than ten million copies and been translated into thirty languages. He lives in Berkshire, England, with his wife and four children.

This mesmerizing historical novel renders the life of Roman orator and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.) through the eyes of Tiro, his loyal servant and biographer. With sometimes haunting verisimilitude, Robert Harris skillfully recreates Tiro's lost masterpiece about his master, evoking the full sweep of Rome's treacherous political scene. All the arbiters of imperial power are here: Pompey, Caesar, Crassus. Toga conspiracies and backstabbing senators; a timeless tale told with elegance and a sense of telling detail.

The Washington Post - Dennis Drabelle

Toward the end comes a walk-on by Publius Clodius Pulcher, the most beautiful man in Rome, who figures prominently in another splendid novel of antiquity, Thornton Wilder's The Ides of March. I can think of no better endorsement of Imperium than to mention those two books in the same breath.